


Auld Lang Syne

by toujours_nigel



Category: The Charioteer - Mary Renault
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-02
Updated: 2014-01-02
Packaged: 2018-01-07 04:17:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1115409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toujours_nigel/pseuds/toujours_nigel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Laurie hadn't caught up with the change from undergraduate to civilian yet, which was in its own way as remarkable as the change from undergraduate to soldier.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Auld Lang Syne

After his borrowed rooms in Christ Church, Ralph’s flat felt marvellously homelike. He’d moved again, into a place that allowed the polite fiction of separate bedrooms: Laurie’s was laughably empty save the boxes of books they’d brought over in Ralph’s car; the bedstead was bare, and even Laurie’s clothes were stacked in the bureau Ralph had apportioned him. He would have to get out of the habit of calling it Ralph’s flat, soon, or risk hurting him very deeply, but he seemed as yet to be only visiting.

In the summer they had gone around the city looking for new digs, but he hadn’t been around for the final decision, and there hadn’t been time, in between, for him to come down to visit Ralph. It was nicer than the last, big airy rooms with large windows furnished comfortably with little care for style; a framed map of Bridstow hung over the fireplace, and the sailor’s head that Laurie had seen in Alec’s flat was tucked into the empty corner of one bookshelf. Other than that the walls were bare. Bunny would have hated it, Laurie had thought, and been quite unable to resist the thrill of pleasure that went through him.

Ralph had watched him look around with the beginnings of a smile, and said, very evenly, “I’m terrible at this sort of thing, I thought I ought not spoil it before you came.”

 

* * *

 

 

In fact there was little Laurie wanted to change. His books would have to be sorted and put away, of course, and he had already found the perfect spot for his gramophone. But he was loath to set to work, even when the task at hand promised to be as pleasant as this. The future stretched out shadowy and fraught with difficult decisions. It was far easier to sink lower into the bedclothes and sham at sleep. Ralph was warm beside him, the long line of his back dimly visible beneath the covers and irresistibly tempting. The skin prickled where he touched it, and Ralph, who he had thought still asleep, laughed and turned to snatch up Laurie’s hands in his own.

“You’ve cold fingers,” Ralph explained, and pulled them close to warm with his breath. “I’d forgotten.” He kissed every knuckle, and then the palm, before pressing it quite carelessly against his sternum. His heart beat a steady tattoo beneath Laurie’s palm.

God, but it was good to lie abed with Ralph like this. It had been so long. In the summer they’d had a fortnight together before Ralph’d been called up for further training and Laurie had trudged off, sullen and resentful, to see his mother and Mr. Straike before he returned to university. It hadn’t been terrible, but it had cemented Laurie’s disinclination towards dear old Gareth. The man still persisted in calling him Lawrence, and there had been the awkward fumbling for a salutation that left his mother flustered, Laurie nonplussed and Straike himself irritatingly smug. It wasn’t so much that he didn’t want to call Straike Father—though he didn’t—as that he hadn’t had occasion to use the appellation since he was a child. It was a silly, trivial thing to care about, especially now, but Laurie still felt it a strain even months after: he would have greatly preferred to spend Christmas with Ralph, and as much of it in the flat as humanly possible. He wanted nobody else about, these first few weeks of his new life. But his mother had been hinting at a great surprise for him for a good while, and would sulk terribly.

His hand rose and fell with Ralph’s breath, brown against the fair gold of his skin. It was a compelling sight, so soon after their reunion. When he looked up again, Ralph was staring at him in open question.

“I was wishing,” Laurie explained, “that I could just stay here with you.”

“Worried about me or yourself?” He’d let Laurie’s hand slip to the bed, the better to turn on his side and peer at Laurie in the dim light.

“Neither, really. It’s all rather childish, I suppose. I simply can’t stand the man. He wants to be my father and he wants to prove to my mother that he’s the better man of us two and I can’t stand the thought of spending so long at his house. Ralph. Don’t laugh, it isn’t funny in the least.”

 “No,” Ralph said, and braced his hand against the mattress to loom more comfortably over Laurie. “Of course it’s not. Spud. Stop moving away unless you actually want me to turn you loose.”

 

* * *

 

 

Sometime later Ralph said, “I’ll come with you if you want, if there’s anywhere I can put up.”

“You can stay with me. I don’t mean with my mother. The Trevors have moved to be near their daughter and it’s lying empty. I would have had to look for a tenant while I was there anyway, and this’ll save me from having to share a roof with Straike.”

“Anything to oblige you,” Ralph said evenly, but his smile had turned fixed and a little forced.

“It’d be the best present I could get my mother,” Laurie said. “And myself. I hated leaving you here with Alec last year.” In a moment, Laurie thought, he might start whinging about it being unfair. Things were what they were, and it was no use complaining that they should have been otherwise. It didn’t change anything. If it could he shouldn’t have to wish.

Ralph said, “Of course I’ll come with you,” in quite a changed voice. “Spuddy.”

“Then that’s settled,” Laurie declared, easing himself more comfortably into the loose embrace of Ralph’s outstretched arm, and taking his hand. It was the left, and he folded the fingers carefully into his palm. “You’ll come with me and we’ll ruin Christmas for Straike. You can tell Mother about the sharks in Mombasa, she’ll like that.”

And now Ralph _was_ laughing. “As you wish, my dear.”


End file.
